My Adventure With A MOOC

Overstatement is never a good thing. 

...the budding revolution in global online higher education. Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems... more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity. --Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 1/26/13

He's talking about college professors video recording lectures, superimposing their faces over a digital whiteboard or powerpoint slides, embedding quick quizzes to check for understanding, and giving regular tests for students to demonstrate their learning. NOTHING else has more potential to lift more people out of poverty?

I recently finished my first MOOC, using the Coursera platform mentioned by Friedman in his article.  The course, Drugs and the Brain was offered through Cal Tech. I thought it might give me a little more credibility in writing about the value of MOOCs, and as a Psychology teacher I wanted to learn more about the biology behind the interactions between drugs and the brain.

Overall, I would rate my experience as quite positive.

1)I had an opportunity to learn for free from a very accomplished instructor through a prestigious University.

2) While I could have probably found most of the information shared somewhere on the internet, having an instructor narrow the focus and give it meaningful direction added an efficiency to the process that made it possible.

3) With two jobs, three children, and a terrible writing habit, finding the time to leave home for three to five hours a week to sit in on a class is not an option.  This course was accessible.

4) Related to the third, this course was for personal and professional growth. I wasn't interested in showing full mastery or the capacity to continue a course of study or move forward in a sequence. I was able to casually devote whatever time I wished to sacrifice without the "de-motivator" of no credit or a bad grade.

I accomplished my goal through this course. I can't explain much of what I learned, and truthfully, I still don't understand some of it.  But, when I teach my students about neurons in the brain and how chemicals in the body function, I can do so with a little more clarity and understanding of my own.  I am more confident with the level of material that I'm supposed to know than before I took this class.

But does it really have the potential to "unlock a billion more brains to solve the worlds problems."  My experience wasn't all that.

1) The first two weeks were so far over my head, I learned very little. I was able to take the quizzes a first time and return to the class notes with more focused study for a second or third attempt. This process of quizzing, studying, and requizzing helped me learn a bit more.  From the discussion threads, I gather that many in the course considered this cheating. I considered this, but as a consumer, I took the course with a different purpose than finding out how high I could rank among other students. But this presents a clear problem with the platform-- how will it measure student learning in a fair way considering many of the courses have thousands of students enrolled.

2) Other than accessibility and convenience, there is little difference in the instruction from a traditional college course. It involved lectures and testing. The instructor was good, but even in a room with other humans, lecture without interaction is tedious.  The topics were delivered in 5-15 minute segments, but still accounted to hours a week of lecture. By week three, I resorted to setting the playback speed to 1.5x and 2.0x by week four, slowing down for items of interest or pausing for better understanding.  Week five was the most relevant topic for my learning goals, but other commitments that week led me to skimming over the lecture slides and giving the quiz a shot without watching the lectures. I do plan to go back and watch them, but this doesn't look much different than typical behavior in a traditional setting.

3) The course instructor notes in comments on Friedman's article that they plan to award 4400 statements of completion and remarks that the online community has generated more than 5000 postings. Over a five week course that averages to 1000/week. I considered participating in this community, but the number of people and volume of posts were overwhelming. The serious difference in MOOCs, and other forms of online courses shows itself the most here. In the half-dozen or so other online courses that I've taken, I've been a part of a community of 8-30 people, expected to interact with each other.

4) Finally, I found it easier to "compensate" for what I didn't know than to put the effort into learning it.  I ignored formulas and calculations throughout the course because they involved skills that I either didn't possess or hadn't used in several decades. I knew it would take a little time to brush up and figure out how to do it, but I also knew that the cost of not learning would be minimal and I wouldn't find myself needing it in the future anyway.

I would rather end on a positive note than a negative about my MOOC experience.  The only reason I bring up the negatives is to place a little reality check on the praise.  There is a place for MOOCs in the world of education.  They provide a valuable service that cannot be provided any other way in our current world.  I am enrolled in two more courses through Coursera for this calendar year and look forward to them.

But, they aren't going to save the world.  Maybe they'll make a boot shaped dent that's better than nothing, but they won't replace education as we know it.  And if we think they will, and try to make it happen sooner rather than later by not supporting public preK through college education appropriately, we might find that our adventure in MOOCs could have the opposite of the rosy effect Mr. Friedman predicts.

This is Progress?

It has been a busy past week for sure.  But the lead story of our local paper on Monday  1/14/13 read as follows:

"UVa set to launch global classrooms"

Now there has to be something remarkable in this article to warrant putting education as the lead right?   Wrong.  

It is arguable that the University of Virginia is behind the times a bit in launching its digital presence and many theorize that contributed to the failed ouster of Teresa Sullivan this past summer by the Board of Visitors lead by Helen Dragas.  The efforts to improve in this area led to a partnership between Coursera and UVa as they offer MOOCs(Massive Online Open Courses).  This particular article features World History teacher Phillip Zelikow and his efforts to provide a World History Course using this approach.  

Zelikow and the author laud the new approach of flipping the classroom.  New huh?  

There is nothing new about much of this.  It is merely a reflection of the shifting political winds.  For starters the wondrous fascination with online education and technology leads to a false sense that technology infused education is automatically better.  They are blinded to the fact that it may simply be a lecture on a computer rather than in person.  The idea that the campus walls are being knocked down is intoxicating.  But UVa doesn't stand out for this type of this nor am I thinking it should try.  Certainly the access by the masses to skills and knowledge is a piece very attractive to many.

But so is Google. Can the result of a MOOC on the participant be described as "an education?"  Is this effort more valuable for UVa to go global or for the participants?   

I have taken several MOOCs and some were good, some were not.  One was even through UVa.  What usually made the difference was if I was able to interact with the instructor.  If you do not have access to an actual person to enrich your learning, what does that say about quality?  My feeling is that a real education starts when you are born and mostly comes from interactions with real life people.  There is a whole lot more going on that just the conveyance of information or content.  Learning  is a two way street despite what the commercials at the University of Phoenix would have you believe.  The MOOCs I've taken helped me but only to the degree necessary.   They did their job.  There are many shortfalls with  MOOCs not the least of which is the way they are pushed and marketed.  


The intoxication with flipping is even worse.  Nevermind "flipping" a classroom to those of us in the basement meant sneaking into a classroom and literally turning all the desks upside down.  This oft repeated  buzzword seems to seduce reformers and they immediately conclude this is the "panacea".  The magic bullet.   I can't escape the irony that this "flipping" (and the paper uses quotes too) is all too normal.  It usually amounts to a taped lecture and then making the students do what would have previously been homework in class.   In some cases that is an improvement and the teacher who can be replaced by a computer deserves to be.   It is one of many best practices.  But we must not forget that a good education involves a teacher, a student and an rich variety of methods.  None that are worthwhile should be sacrificed for expediency or cost.  There are trade offs with flipping.   In high schools for instance having 8 teachers "flip" on you might mean you are now saddled with a hours of instructional videos amounting to more homework.  The door may be open to individual attention in class and more student centered strategies but at what cost to the student?  The fluid nature of piecing together information replaced with uniform and robotic information. 

It seems in our rush to improve the status quo in education we are willing to look beyond the flaws of any given approach and promote it simply because of the novelty or the price.  Zelikow and UVa are doing a good thing. But anyone who believes this will amount to some increase in quality or experience for most enrolled is probably mistaken.  The real benefit is the ability of Zelikow to then do more small group discussion during the actual class.  As we change the face of education we must not overlook the fact that it still needs to resemble a face. After reading his piece it would seem to me that Douglass Rucskoff of CNN would agree that we should not make distance learning, MOOCs or similar reform into it something they are not.  

I remember 15 or so years ago doing my student teaching and supervising a latin class where the students learned via satellite network.  They watched broadcast lessons,  submitted their papers by mail and waited weeks for feedback.  Their boredom and frustration was painfully obvious.  Not so much with the delay but with the isolated feel and absence of a relationship with a knowledgeable teacher.  They were stuck with me.  Devoid spontaneity their learning suffered.   This and their multi-tasking meant there was no way they learned as much as the students present with the teacher.  But they did have the chance to take Latin which counts for something.  

So Progress has been made I suppose.  And in the years since we have traded satellite feeds for high speed internet.  The change is noticeably unremarkable.  Unwilling to accept the realities of the human mind and learning we continue to search for "better" ways to learn.  The result is an over-willingness to see such measures as headline worthy.  When in fact they are just worthy.  I commend UVa and Zellikow for their efforts.  But I stop short of buying this approach as anything but less than what students in his current class might experience. 

Flipping and MOOCs and what they are.  Not headlines.  And not real progress.